earness of thought as they have attained
in their brief. I have found it useful to prescribe marginal titles to
the paragraphs: a student who has struggled to find a single phrase that
will cover all of a sprawling paragraph will have learned some respect
for firmness of paragraphing. In general, an instructor has a right to
insist that his class shall apply in practice all that they have learned
about the ordinary devices for getting clearness and emphasis.

In the third place, this practice in writing arguments ought to leave
with students a more developed idea of how to make readers look
favorably on a proposition which they are urging. I have insisted, at
the risk of seeming repetitious, on the need of considering the audience
whose minds are to be won over; for what persuasiveness can mean apart
from specific persons to persuade I cannot conceive. Much of the
perfunctory emptiness of the textbooks when they get to this part of the
subject comes from neglecting this very practical and obvious side of
making an argument. The difficulty it raises for arguments written in
class work is just as obvious; more than most kinds of composition
written for practice, arguments run the risk of having no touch with
reality. Something may be done, however, if an instructor guides his
class toward the kind of questions I have suggested above: an argument
on the rules of football would be addressed to the Rules Committee, and
most youths would know something of the prepossessions of so famous a
man as Mr. Camp; an argument on a college question would be addressed
to the faculty or the president, and it may be assumed that students
have some idea of their general attitude on such matters. I have
followed the practice in my own sections of freshmen of requiring them
to put at the head of their brief and of their argument the audience
which they had in mind. Then when one comes to criticism and conference
one can by a little cross-examination bring home to them the very
practical nature of this matter of persuasion.

One must be careful not to insist too strictly on the model and the
scheme of work laid down here, and in practically the same form in other
books. It is the best that has yet been devised, but any student who is
set to making a brief of one of the examples of argument at the end of
this book will see for himself that there is no one infallible way of
making an argument. Each argument must adapt itself to its occasion and